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Para Bellum Labs Will Attempt To Make the RNC a Political-Analytics Player
Nerval's Lobster writes "President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign relied on a sophisticated data-analytics platform that allowed organizers and volunteers to precisely target potential donors and voters. The centerpiece of that effort was Project Narwhal, which brought voter information—steadily accumulated since Obama's 2008 campaign—onto a single platform accessible to a growing number of campaign-related apps. The GOP has only a few short years to prepare for the next Presidential election cycle, and the party is scrambling to build an analytics system capable of competing against whatever the Democrats deploy onto the field of battle. To that end, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has launched Para Bellum Labs, modeled after a startup, to produce digital platforms for election analytics and voter engagement. Is this a genuine attempt to infuse the GOP's infrastructure with data science, or merely an attempt to show that the organization hasn't fallen behind the Democratic Party when it comes to analytics? Certainly the "Welcome to Para Bellum Labs" video posted by the RNC gives the impression of a huge office staffed with data scientists and programmers. However, the creation of a muscular digital ecosystem hinges on far more than building a couple of apps. Whatever the GOP rolls out, it'll face a tough opponent in the Democratic opposition, which will almost certainly emulate the robust IT infrastructure that the Obama campaign instituted in 2012 (not to mention Obama's massive voter and donor datasets). From that perspective, Para Bellum Labs might face the toughest job in politics."
I know that 'Orca' pretty much sucked in the most hilarious ways possible, so I can understand wanting to ditch that name, and maybe cetacean-based names in general; but isn't 'Para Bellum Labs' kind of pitiful-IT-violence-nerd at best and creepy at worst?
While the Republicans probably have a lot of catching up to do in the tech department, they're still clueless as to why they are losing in the political arena, and it has nothing to do with tech. They've long since given up their founding principles of being pro-liberty (remember, most Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act) and internationally cautious and have instead become a hangout for corrupt Beltway extortionists and moonbat crazies in recent decades. When they do offer a political position, it's about 75 percent of what the Democrats offer, so what's the point of supporting them? Finally, dislike of government is a prominent Republican theme, but they've never seen a defense program they didn't like (by and large). All that adds up to a brand which is more damaged than New Coke and would take a cold, hard look in the mirror before it can ever expect to be resurrected, which they are not capable of doing. In ten years, the GOP will have largely gone the way of the Whigs, maybe winning some local elections, but increasingly irrelevant on the national scene.
Hmmm. What message are they giving here?
Parabellum, n
Definition: a type of semiautomatic pistol or machine-gun; also called Luger, also written parabellum
Etymology: Latin 'for war'
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
They keep babbling about needing to do a better job of getting their message out, and using technology like Obama did to spread their message. Well, bullshit, we heard their message and said "no". No to bigotry against gays, no to the notion that a single cell can be a human being with a soul and consciousness, no to pushing the lie they call "creation science" into the classroom, no to lying to rape victims about the mechanism by which emergency contraception prevents pregnancy, no to all the anti-intellectual garbage that springs from twisted wacko interpretations of the old testament.
But I guess they're not hearing what the voters said, and so it's going to take them using technology better, and suffering another spectacular loss, to start accepting the idea that the problem is the message, not lack of effectiveness in communicating it.
Sigh. You see, I really would like a president who understands the limits of the ability of the government to fix all problems with massive spending, and the negative side effects of massive new spending, and who would strike (in my opinion obviously) a better balance. But as long as the republicans keep nominating candidates who toe the anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-science, anti-intellectual line drawn by the party hard-liners, I will keep voting for the democrats.
The Republican primaries were a gauntlet of Tea Party idiots. So everyone had to steer to the extreme far right to win their support to get on the ballot.
Then, during the general election, they had to steer to the middle. To, you know, actually get votes.
You can't appeal to the fringe and the center at the same time. Appeal to the base of Tea Party nutbags, and middle America won't vote for you, you disgust them. Appeal to middle America, and the Tea Party nutbags won't vote for you, just as you say in your comment. A house divided, yada yada yada
If the Republicans don't fix this problem, they are going to lose again in 2016. And 2020, 2024, etc.
Personally, as a Democrat, I love the Tea Party: sabotaging the Republican Party from within.
There is no bigger friend for Democratic domination of the Presidency (and, with demographic trends, increasingly the House and Senate in the long term, even with Republican gerrymandering) than the Tea Party.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
From what I remember, the Romney campaign ignored their own polls that said they were losing. How would improving the data help when you won't pay any attention to it?
That statement speaks volumes about what is wrong about the electoral system, and US politics in general. It's all about winning and consolidating power. Few people are really interested in the process of governance. Jesus H. Christ, where are the adults?!
You're looking for "antebellum", which is used to differentiate the American South in the pre-Civil War period from that of later times. It is a homophone of "anti-bellum" but has an entirely different meaning.
French - The lingua franca of Europe!
"Para bellum" is usually known from "Si vis pacem, para bellum", which means, roughly, "If you want peace, prepare for war." The problem is I think the Republicans A) forgot that first part and B) probably shouldn't consider the democratic process as a kind of war (this is a political data analytics thing, so that's the only logical interpretation). That they do explains a lot about their thought process in the past few years.